Cabrera's climb to top was perilous

Masters champion faced long odds

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Kenny Perry was talking last week at the Masters about humble upbringings. Growing up in Kentucky, he was the son of an insurance salesman whose home course was a rugged little nine-hole track. Perry worked as a cart guy in Florida at one point and had to borrow money from his church to keep playing pro golf.

But let's face it, it was a modest American life, nothing to compare to the heartbreaking, hunger-filled childhood of new Masters champion Angel Cabrera of Argentina.

When Cabrera gathers with the other Masters winners for the Champions Dinner during tournament week at Augusta National next year, his will truly be an almost unimaginable rise. None of the men in that room will have come from such a hardscrabble life.

It's no wonder he has fought his way to a pair of major wins, becoming just the 15th player in history to win the U.S. Open and Masters. He is the first South American player to pull on the green jacket.

It makes you appreciate the joy of his championship even more.

In the best story written on Cabrera in the U.S, Sports Illustrated writer Alan Shipnuck visited Cabrera's hometown after he'd won the U.S. Open at Oakmont in 2007.

Cabrera, 39, grew up almost literally in the streets of Mendiolaza in Argentina's horse country. His father left the family when he was about 3, and his mother chose to keep two siblings while leaving Angel with his paternal grandmother. At the end of a dirt road littered with trash and stray dogs, his grandmother had a home that was two brick walls covered with a tin roof.

Often picking fights in the streets, Cabrera and a friend “borrowed” horses from the neighbors to ride. Angel worked as a gardener for the rich families who employed his grandmother as a housekeeper, but he got fired for falling asleep on the job. He dropped out of school in the sixth grade, and at 16 moved out to live with his girlfriend.

At 10, he acquired the job that would change his life. He became a caddie at Cordoba Country Club in nearby Villa Allende, and it was there that he learned to play golf and behave around influential people. It was there he acquired his nickname of El Pato – The Duck – for his waddling walk.

“I was very lucky because hanging out at a golf course was much better than being on the streets,” Cabrera said in the magazine piece. “Golf taught me a great deal. I grew up surrounded by people who were professionals – lawyers, doctors, engineers. Around them I learned how to behave, speak, eat, dress. I had nothing at home. The club was my home.”

The gregarious guy you saw on Sunday, truly enjoying himself amid a three-man playoff with Perry and Chad Campbell? He wasn't so carefree in his younger days.

Fellow Cordoba caddie Jose Antonio Vazquez remembered: “I knew Pato was going to be a great player when he was 15 and I saw him go nuts after hitting a bad tee shot on the 10th hole. He was furious because he was so serious about the game. He practiced endlessly. He would either devour the course or it would devour him.”